World Cup Highlight Twitter Bot Suspended After FIFA Takedown Request

And here’s the corner from the DMCA…it’s a line drive…right at FIFA, who’s on a run – FIFA with the header…GOOOOAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!!!

In other words, FIFA has successfully petitioned Twitter to suspend the increasingly popular @ReplayLastGoal account, a single-purpose Twitter bot that automatically tweeted the video replay and animated GIF of the latest #Worldcup goal. You know, so the world could easily see the most important action from the world’s game’s biggest stage.

Though it’s not 100 percent confirmed that FIFA is responsible for the takedown, FIFA is responsible for the takedown. Damman received a notice from Twitter 11 days ago warning him that they had received a copyright takedown notice, pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Of course, the complaint came from the Federation Internationale De Football Association.

“On behalf of FIFA as owner of the exclusive rights to the copyrighted material at issue in this notice, we hereby state that we have a good faith belief that use/display of the material in the manner complained of is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.”

In other words, FART.

ReplayLastGoal and Damman argued fair use, noting that there are “plenty of Vines and GIF out there,” a fact which is abundantly clear by looking at Twitter.

But FIFA persisted, and Twitter finally suspended the account.

So, you can’t watch World Cup goals generated by this particular Twitter bot. you can watch World Cup goals in about a gajillion other GIFs and videos being posted from a gajillion other Twitter accounts.